Video Production.

Video production is the process of turning a brief into a finished film — script, shoot, edit, grade and delivery. We run all five in-house from Dubai and Karachi, which means the person who wrote the treatment is in the room when it is cut, and nothing gets lost in a handover between vendors.

Fifty-four films sit in the archive above, across six registers: fashion and retail for Gul Ahmed, Bonanza Satrangi and Almirah; beauty and fragrance for J. Fragrances; food for Shan Foods; corporate and public work for ISPR and Syngenta; and culture work like Movement X Lyari. Different audiences, one standard of finish.

What a production includes

• Narrative strategy — the argument the film makes before a camera is switched on
• Treatment and storyboard — shot list, locations, talent and a visual reference deck
• Direction and cinematography — including drone, on location across the UAE and Pakistan
• Edit, grade and sound — finished in-house, not sent out
• Delivery in every ratio you need — a master plus cutdowns for social, events and paid media

One shoot, many deliverables

The expensive part of a film is getting crew, talent and location into the same place on the same day. Once that is paid for, additional cuts are comparatively cheap. Our LWK + PARTNERS documentary shipped a seven-minute master, seven one-minute thematic cuts for social and events, and subtitle tracks in English, Arabic and Chinese — from one production block.

That is the economics we plan around: brief the shoot for everything you will need over the next year, not just the film you are commissioning today.

Sectors we shoot for

Fashion and retail, beauty and fragrance, food and beverage, corporate and institutional, public sector, and music and culture. If your category is not on that list it usually means the approach transfers rather than that we have not done it — ask.

How a video production runs

Every stage below has to happen whether or not it is planned for. Costs escalate when they happen out of order — a location locked before a permit is cleared, or a script approved after the crew is booked.

1. Brief and objective — what the film has to achieve, who it is for and where it will run
2. Treatment and script — the argument, the structure and the visual reference, signed off before anything is booked
3. Permits and locations — DFTC approval in Dubai runs three to five working days, so this starts before the schedule is fixed
4. Pre-production — casting, crew, equipment, wardrobe, shot list and a call sheet everyone works to
5. Shoot — the one genuinely expensive day; briefed for every deliverable you will need, not only the hero cut
6. Edit, grade and sound — assembled, colour-graded and mixed in-house rather than sent to a third party
7. Versioning and delivery — masters plus cutdowns in every ratio, with subtitles and localised audio where needed

Formats and what actually drives their cost

Video is not priced per minute. A sixty-second commercial can cost several times a five-minute corporate film, because price follows crew size, shoot days and post-production weight — not duration.

This is why the single most useful thing a brief can contain is not a budget figure but a list of everything the film has to feed — broadcast, paid social, the website, the trade stand, next year's sales deck. Deliverables planned before the shoot are close to free. Deliverables requested afterwards need another shoot.

Filming in Dubai: permits, and what they do to your schedule

The Dubai Film and TV Commission is the sole authority for filming permits, and a permit is required for essentially any professional production — advertisements, short and long form, documentary and commercial photography. If you are using professional lighting, rigs or a crew of any size, you need one. Filming without a permit carries a AED 25,000 penalty.

The practical points that affect a production plan:

• Lead time — standard processing is three to five working days, so permits sit on the critical path, not beside it
• Application fee — AED 520 per application, non-refundable
• Public locations — carry an additional location fee on top of the application
• Private locations — negotiated separately and can run to several thousand dirhams per day
• Overseas brands cannot apply directly — a foreign company must appoint a UAE-licensed production company to act as local applicant and partner
• Influencer content — since January 2026, promotional creator content also requires a UAE Media Council advertiser permit

That last-but-one point is worth reading twice if you are commissioning from outside the UAE. However good your home production team is, the permit has to be raised by a local entity. Building that into the timeline at the start is the difference between a shoot that runs and a shoot that slips a fortnight.

Shooting across the UAE and Pakistan

We produce out of Dubai and Karachi, which matters for two kinds of brief. Regional campaigns needing the same film in two markets get one director, one grade and one standard of finish rather than two vendors and a visible mismatch. And brands working to a tighter budget can shoot elements in Pakistan — where crew and location costs are materially lower — while keeping direction and post consistent with the UAE work.

What does not change between markets is the finish. The LWK & Partners documentary shipped a seven-minute master, seven one-minute thematic cuts and subtitle tracks in English, Arabic and Chinese from a single production block — the economics we plan every shoot around.